We've been making changes to the our lineup of panoheads and I wanted to briefly mention them...

Our Precision panohead, the QuickPan Professional has been very popular. In fact, it's our most popular new panohead ever. This head offers template-level precision at very affordable pricing. You can obtain more information on the QuickPan Pro at the two links below. We now include the optional bubble level as standard equipment and also provide a lifetime warranty. If anything should go wrong, we will fix it free of charge. This is one rock-solid ultra-precise unit (just look at the arms compared to others). No sag, no sway, no nonsense. There are two images (at the very bottom) of the QuickPan Professional.

The latest product that we've just announced is our KiWi Europa Rotator (first picture below). This replaces our QuickPan rotator. Improving on the QuickPan rotator the KiWi Europa includes a compass (for orienting shots to true north), improved friction drag, an adjustable Placeholder to easily and quickly locate the camera bracket (also found on the QuickPan Pro), a wide range of ClickDiscs (12 included), a spare index plunger and a lifetime warranty. The KiWi Europa will work with all Kaidan camera brackets. We are shipping the KiWi Europa Rotator now - our web page will be updated shortly.

Kaidan is also proud to offer any member of this forum a 10% discount on any Kaidan product. Just mention Autopano Pro and your username on this forum.

The QuickPan Professional "Autopano" price is $719.95 and includes the bubble level option.The KiWi Europa Rotator "Autopano" price is $116.95.

More dimensions of the QuickPan Professional. Please note that all of our arms, horizontal and swing / KiWi Europa and QuickPan Professional are all 2.00 inches wide - and thus, all of our camera brackets are interchangeable.

-Jim

Last edited by Kaidan on Sun Nov 23, 2008 4:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

I had assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that the Hardware forum was an appropriate place for manufacturers to post information. I did review other threads in the Hardware topic and noticed other manufacturers posting so I thought it was OK.

I also made sure that my thread topic and my user ID was clearly named and identified. I'm very sensitive to spamming and didn't consider my posts that way. I did not post (or update my post) merely for "free advertising". Someone mentioned dimensions so I just posted that rather dry, mundane information. I thought a forum post in an appropriate section and providing access to help/support would be a good thing for all.

We (Kaidan) don't at the moment have an online forum - but if (and when) we did, I think it would be a great place for various software manufacturers (like Kolor) to have a place to discuss and post info about their products. I would not consider it advertising all all. (BTW: I did not notice an area where Kolor accepted 3rd party ads)

One other thought... I think it's much more honest and "gentlemanly" for companies to participate openly and directly in forums and mailing lists with their real names and email addresses. All too often, companies resort to using fake IDs and shills to make public posts on their behalf in order to generate buzz and sales.

Best regards,Jim AndersKaidan

Last edited by Kaidan on Sun Nov 23, 2008 11:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

I guess, I don't understand the concern. If someone's not interested in a "Kaidan Panoramic Head" thread in the hardware section - can't they simply skip over it? In my opinion (FWIW), I would think having manufacturers post responsibly, openly and directly, instead of having them use "surrogates" would be more desirable.

Also...

And yes, I agree our web site sucks and we're working on it. Perhaps someone out there (with real-world experience) would be interested in helping us update it? We could work something out?

And, sure, I'd be more than grateful if you could send me information on that French forum.

Regards,Jim

Last edited by Kaidan on Sun Nov 23, 2008 8:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well, I just got here. I did offer a discount to this community and I plan to provide any assistance I can. BTW, I'm an engineer. I'm not a marketing or sales guy. I design all the Kaidan products. I was hoping this one thread could be a place where Kaidan product stuff could be discussed - but it doesn't look like it's going that well. I'd like to eventually be able to offer loaners and other forms of assistance as well.

If anyone has any questions, comments or concerns, drop me a line.

-Jim

PS: Andrew - thanks for the vote of confidence.

Last edited by Kaidan on Mon Nov 24, 2008 6:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hi Jim, welcome to our forum.Well, not an easy situation for me to give you my feeling about that first post.On one hand, I have quite the same feeling as Gerardm, you should have ask first before posting, on the other hand, I did that once too in the past because being the engineer and being proud of my product, I just wanted to post and did really care of anything else beyond the simple fact of posting.So let's just close this debate and move on : here's 2 proposals for the future that will put in the guideline of the forum :Idea 1 : Having a marketplace sub-forum for such proposals ( like in Max Lyons' forum )Idea 2 : Hardware manufacturer asks for permission ( there's no reason we won't give them the authorization, it's more a gentleman policy ) and they then, they have the right to post on the hardware sub-forum.

Please don't stop posting just because about that. I'm listening to your opinion as a manufacturer. I'm used to ask every people advice for such decision on the forum. We are here in presence of a community and as a community, most of time, democracy works

I felt ok reading the first post, as people announce their projects or link to a commercial product occasionally. By the third post, I felt as though Jim might be hijacking Kolor's web server. Whether it is allowed or not, Jim should be aware of this fact, as it defeats his marketing intentions.

I appreciate his open participation, and hope that he will lend his expertise and experience to other issues he finds here. I personally like the idea of commercial information being available, but also like the idea that it is identifiable, with a note in the post heading, or by putting the post in a subsection.

As APP grows there will be more people using this site, and new issues like these will arise. That is a good thing. We want the forum to grow and offer even more possibilities to the community.

BeeZed wrote:There is something wrong when a main developer as AlexandreJ is giving for free to the community an open source code like autopano-siftâ€¦ What i disagree about is the fact that AlexandreJ worked a lot for the entire community and found out that this community did even recognized what he did for the panotools community â€¦

Some clarification here : I gave to the panotools community for free the "autopano v1.03" plugins. Do not mislead that one with autopano-sift which was coded 2 years after by Sebastian Norowiz. This first autopano plugin is still today dowloaded a lot on the website for free.

I'm reading back the full thread. Perhaps we should split this thread in 2 parts : one the informative part that will stay as now ( kaidan post ) and the commentary in a second post to be able to discuss about the forum policy without hijacking the main thread title ... Yes / No ? I vote yes.

I think that's a good idea. This thread has been pretty much trashed. I think it would also help to either clarify the mission statement of the Hardware topic (i.e. no commercial posting allowed, just for hardware comments by customers or whatever) OR create another topic for "Commercial Announcements" and discussions.

-Jim

Let me stress one more time...

I do appreciate the constructive comments regarding manufacturer's posting. I consider myself very sensitive to these issues of inappropriate posts - I've been doing this for more than 10 years now.

I only posted here because I noticed other manufacturer(s) making post(s) and therefore I thought this topic thread was similar to the "Commercial Announce" section of the Panoguide forums.

-Jim

Last edited by Kaidan on Tue Nov 25, 2008 6:34 am, edited 1 time in total.